A lot has happened since my last column and first of all I must apologise for not checking in sooner. With the amount of travelling we have done all over the world recently, and my son Dakota’s races in between, it has been impossible!

In fact, I’ve got so much to talk to you guys about that I’m going to break it up into three columns, so keep checking in for updates here at alpinestars.com in the days building up to the Malaysian Grand Prix.

The first thing to catch up on is the Indy GP. Like Phillip Island, where I’ve just come back from, Indianapolis has this great atmosphere in and around the town because everybody who is there is there for the bikes. It creates a feeling of kinship that a lot of other sports can only dream of and to experience that passion for two-wheels in a place so steeped in four-wheel tradition was something special. Even the local news channels were there every morning showing live pictures from the racetrack starting at 6am! Just everything about the way the town and the circuit embraced the sport was fantastic.

In actual fact, despite all of the car racing history that has come out of Indianapolis, next year is the 100th anniversary of the first race to be held there, and it was a motorcycle race! Of course, the USA has a great tradition for motorcycle racing in general and pretty much the whole Grand Prix paddock was able to experience it on Saturday night at the Indy dirt-track mile.

Dirt-track is a discipline that is close to my heart because it is how I began racing, like so many other top American road racers, so it was a real thrill to have all the European guys along to see what it was like. The guys (and girls!) produced an amazing spectacle that just blew everybody away and it wasn’t just the paddock regulars who enjoyed it. Many of the fans who’d come from around the world to see MotoGP history made at Indy also took their chance to experience ‘the mile’ and the attendance was more than double the previous record.

At the circuit on race day there were an incredible 91,000 fans there – despite the horrendous weather. NASCAR gets 400,000, IndyCar gets 400,000 and while we can only dream of those kind of attendance figures the fans who came to Indy certainly put us on the map as the third biggest sport to grace the Brickyard. It was a landmark day in the 60-year history of motorcycle Grand Prix racing.

It was a shame the 250cc race got scrapped but with a lot of luck we got through the MotoGP race and it was so fitting that the soon-to-be six-times World Champion, Valentino Rossi, did battle with a local hero in Nicky Hayden.

Despite Ike’s best efforts, MotoGP was the biggest thing to hit Indianapolis that weekend and we have laid a great foundation there to go back to and build on in future years.